


Numbers

by morningmalarkey



Category: Eleven Little Roosters (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 15:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10924350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningmalarkey/pseuds/morningmalarkey
Summary: Ryan thought he was finished with the clones after the events surrounding Rooster Corps were covered in bureaucratic red tape.But what happens when he finds Gavin the Third died long before the spy agency?





	Numbers

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first full fic published! Hope you like it!

Rain fell against the window, pattering softly off the concrete and glass. The bustle of the coffeeshop faded into background noise. Sitting in a leather booth, sipping on a coffee, and staring into the distance was Matt Hullum, oblivious to the world around him.  
The bells attached to the coffeeshop door gently tinkled, a man walking into Matt's view space and sitting. Looking up, Matt silently offered the man a cinnamon-covered, round pastry. The man pushed the sweet back towards Matt, who simply sighed, beginning to eat the pastry himself.  
Sitting across from Matt was none other than Ryan Haywood himself, famous in the papers after the Dinner Party Massacre, as the press called it. A woman named Barbara Dunkelman had broken, killing nine of her coworkers and friends at Rooster Teeth, a filmmaking company. Intending to kill Ryan as well, she had been stopped by her intended victim, who was the sole survivor. Having been internet personalities, the news spread fast, and Ryan's face was plastered all over the news as the hero who defeated the murderer. His fame only increased after the killings at the spy agency Rooster Corps, having been one of the individuals to assist Agent Moose in taking down Mavin. Mavin had been a broken amalgamation of Gavin the Third and a memory of Michael Jones, a victim of Dunkelman, killing to avenge Michael in some twisted way.  
Still wearing one of the kilts he was famous for, along with a white dress shirt, Ryan shook the water out of his light hair and began to speak.  
"You mentioned Gavin the Third in your letter."  
Matt sighed, taking a swig of his coffee.  
"I remember, in the papers," he began, "that the disbanding of that spy agency, Rooster Corps, was due to Gavin the Third. Or Mavin, as he called himself."  
"That is true."  
"Burnie left a note to me in his will, mentioning something about the clones."  
Ryan frowned.  
"What, specifically?"  
"He said to let the Gavin clones free, and to give the Third a proper burial."  
Ryan paused, confusion flitting over his features. The clones of Gavin Free, created by Gus Sorola, Geoff Ramsey, and Burnie Burns, had been a kind of experiment, and a joke around the office. After the Massacre, which resulted in the deaths of the First (or Original) and the Second, and the events at Rooster Corps, Ryan had assumed he was finished with them.  
"What?" he asked, voice speculative. "I thought Burnie died before the Third even joined Rooster Corps."  
"That's why I came to you."  
With that, Matt slid a manilla folder over to Ryan's side of the table, standing up to leave. Walking past Ryan, he slowed for a second.  
"Good luck," Matt muttered, before the door's bells rang and Matt disappeared onto the rainy streets outside.  
Opening the folder only seconds after Matt left, Ryan pulled out three things from the folder. One was a copy of Burnie's will, the note to Matt highlighted. Another was Mavin's autopsy report, the murderer's features restless, even in death. The third, and last, was a copy of the blueprints of Stage 5, Rooster Teeth's former office building. A single closet, the one in the office Burnie and Gus used to work in, was marked with a Post-It. In Matt's familiar scrawl, the note read, 'Check this closet.'  
Slowly closing the folder, Ryan stood.  
Time to revisit Stage 5.  
-o0o-  
Arriving at the old office, Ryan unlocked and pushed open the weathered door, revealing a dark hallway. Stepping inside and pulling the door closed behind him, Ryan flipped on the lights, the old Achievement Hunter office looming ahead. Stepping forward and passing by the door, Ryan rested his hand on the familiar keypad before moving on.  
Walking through the old building, Ryan passed Matt's old office, the puma cage, and the accursed dining hall, looking into each room he passed with a sense of nostalgia. Soon he came to Burnie and Gus' old office, the one they used before Gus moved in with Barbara. Even thinking of her name made Ryan shudder.  
Apprehensively placing his hand on the doorknob to the closet, Ryan pulled the old door open, hinges creaking as the door swung to reveal the closet. The room looked like a simple storage closet, filing cabinets and shelves full of paper and office supplies. Noticing something on one of the shelves, Ryan scooped it up. It was a note, folded to conceal the words. Unfolding it, Ryan started reading.  
"To whoever reads this," the note started, "I'm assuming you're Geoff, Gus, Burnie, or someone who knows them. If you’re here about us, then we’ve let ourselves out and are probably long gone by the time you're reading this.  
Best wishes,  
The Thirteenth"  
Staring at the note, Ryan thought for a second, pondering what he had just read.  
About everyone in the office knew the clones existed, that Geoff, Gus, and Burnie had created copies of the British man, although no one was sure where they were kept. Michael had theorized the basement, and he and Lindsay often got into arguments over the subject as she felt they were most likely in the attic. Jon figured they probably weren't even kept in the building. Whatever the theories (and ever-growing office pool) had to say, it appeared this room was the cage, so to speak, they were held in.  
Ryan folded the note back the way it originally was, scanning the room for any more clues. Finding none, he returned to the office, intending to check the rest of the building.  
Maybe the Hole had some sort of clue.  
-o0o-  
Wandering down the streets of Austin, Ryan carried his folder wrapped in his jacket. Absentmindedly, he glanced at each shop and house he passed, thinking. The clones may have been gone, but surely some clue had to remain. Maybe not in Stage Five, but there had to be something.  
A pair of teenage girls looked at him oddly as he passed, probably questioning his tartan kilt and dress shirt. Face flushing, he looked down at his feet, minusculely shrinking in on himself.  
As someone bumped into him, his head snapped up, intending to apologize. The person muttered a 'sorry', disappearing into the crowded streets again. Ryan sighed, shaking his head.  
'Kids these days,' he thought wryly, aware of how old that made him sound. Spacing out again, Ryan jumped as he heard a familiar voice. Head whipping up to find the owner of the voice, his heart beat faster as he saw a familiar face to match the voice.  
'It couldn't be,' Ryan thought, shocked and bemused. Following the man, he started to jog, his pace becoming a full-blown sprint as his target rounded a corner. Slowing slightly as he neared the man, Ryan clapped a hand on his target's shoulder, spinning him around.  
There stood Geoff Ramsey.  
Looking completely nonplussed, Geoff deadpanned, "Oh, hey Ryan."  
-o0o-  
Sitting on a couch in Geoff's living room, Ryan waited for the other to return from the kitchen, still shocked that his former boss was alive. Alive and doing well, even. Back at Rooster Corps, Geoff and his wife, Griffon, had assumed the identities of the spy agency's Australian division. Just before Agent Moose had figured out the killer's identity, the Third blew up the Ramsey's house in Australia, leaving the two presumed dead.  
"You take sugar with your coffee?"  
Ryan jumped, turning slightly to see Geoff leaning against the doorframe.  
"No, black," he responded, and Geoff disappeared back into the kitchen. Soon reappearing with two mugs of coffee, Geoff sat on the chair opposite the couch Ryan was perched on, the coffee table between them.  
Waiting for Geoff to finish drinking, Ryan finally asked, "How are you alive?"  
Geoff chuckled lightly. "After Mavin blew up my house, the world simply presumed I was dead. I just didn't care enough to correct them," he confessed, shrugging his shoulders.  
Ryan shook his head in utter disbelief. It was such a Geoff thing to do, to let the world assume you were dead because you were too apathetic to tell them otherwise. Geoff said something, and Ryan focused back in on the world.  
"Sorry, what?"  
"I said," Geoff sighed, "why are you here?"  
"Here where?"  
"Austin. I thought you'd moved back to Georgia after Rooster Corps. What are you doing here?"  
"Matt contacted me," Ryan confessed.  
"Oh?" Geoff leaned forward ever so slightly, taking a sip of his coffee. "What for?"  
"You remember the clones?"  
Geoff scoffed. "Of course I do. I helped make them."  
Ryan took a breath. "Well, apparently Burnie left a note in his will about them, the Third specifically."  
"The Third? I thought Burnie died before Mavin even went on his killing streak."  
"I thought so too," Ryan shrugged, "but his will instructed Matt to set them all free and to give the Third a burial."  
Geoff frowned. "Now that I think about it, a clone did die at one point, though I can't remember which. Could have been the Third."  
"Is there any way to check, to know for sure?" Ryan asked desperately, wanting to know, to be sure that all this wasn't for nothing, that this all wasn't some odd rip off of the Westing Game.  
"There was one bonafide way to tell which was which," Geoff recalled. "A tattoo, over each clone's heart, stated a number. That was how we knew which was which."  
Ryan inhaled sharply, reaching for his jacket. Unwrapping the folder, he looked at Geoff.  
"I have his autopsy report."  
Geoff jumped to his feet, dodging around the coffee table to look over Ryan's shoulder.  
Ryan opened the folder, looking through all the files. He flipped past the note, the map, and the will, finally coming to the report. Snatching it out of the folder, he discarded the rest on the coffee table, scanning through the pictures. When he finally reached it, Ryan let out a breath he didn't know he was holding, only to softly gasp at what he saw.  
Geoff grabbed at the photo, turning it so he could see, and frowned, dropping the picture back into Ryan's hands from shock.  
There was no number on Mavin's chest.  
-o0o-  
The bustle of the coffeeshop melding with the pattering of the rain, Ryan sat in silence, staring off into space while nursing a coffee. The leather of his booth creaked underneath him as he shifted, taking a bite into a cinnamon-covered pastry.  
It had turned out that Mavin was not, in fact, the Third as they all assumed. He was the original, Gavin the First, a man torn with grief over the loss of his best friend. It explained Mavin's multiple-personality disorder; there was no way for a clone to feel that attachment to the original's companion, especially since that clone would have spent little to no time with Michael. A clone simply would not have had that attachment to Michael Jones, and certainly would not have developed a personality disorder from grief over losing him.  
The Gavins at the Dinner Party had been the Second and the Fourth, every bit as clumsy as the original as they fell over each other and into a pile of mousetraps. All had assumed that the First, the original, had died at that Massacre, that murder at epic proportions, but he had been feeling sick that day and asked the Fourth to fill in for him.  
Ryan suspected Chris had known something. He had seemed omnipotent, all-seeing, even as an amnesiac. He had that feeling of knowing that there was something more, even as he plummeted to his second death.  
Standing, Ryan counted out the change for his order. Leaving the money on the table, he walked towards the door of the coffeeshop. The bells attached to the door's metal hinge gently tinkled as he stepped out into the rain, walking towards the unknown.


End file.
